Sharan Leventhal

Photo by Susan Wilson, susanwilsonphoto.com

Since winning the Kranischsteiner Musikpreis at the 1984 International Contemporary Music Festival in Darmstadt, Germany, violinist Sharan Leventhal has built an international reputation as a champion of contemporary music. Her more than 100 premieres include works written by Gunther Schuller, Virgil Thomson, William Kraft, Pauline Oliveros, Taina León, and Simon Bainbridge.

Equally active in traditional venues, Leventhal has appeared as a soloist with the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra; the Toledo, Milwaukee, Gulf Coast, Topeka, Dayton and Albany symphonies; and the Wisconsin and Cleveland chamber orchestras, among others. In addition to the trio, she is a member of the Kepler Quartet, and the Boston Artists Ensemble, and appears regularly with the contemporary ensemble, Present Music.

Leventhal has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fromm Foundation, the Australia Council for the Arts, the Serge Koussevitzky Music Foundation, and the Aaron Copland Fund for Music Recording.

She has recorded broadcasts for the BBC, ORF (Austria), Musikradion (Sweden), WGBH-Boston, and WNYC. Her compact disc recordings include the entire violin and piano works of Virgil Thomson for the Northeastern Recordings label, a Kepler Quartet recording of string quartets by Ben Johnston for New World, as well as discs on the GM Recordings, and Catalyst/BMG labels by her critically acclaimed duo Marimolin.

Leventhal teaches at The Boston Conservatory of Music, and Brandeis University, and has served on the faculties of Michigan State University, the Berklee College of Music, Interlochen Arts Camp and the Asian Youth Orchestra in Hong Kong. She presents seminars and master classes throughout the United States and Europe, and has taught regularly at the Bruckner-Konservatorium in Linz, Austria. She is the founder and director of Play On, Inc., a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting active participation in music making.